December 20, 2009

Apophis, a 900-foot asteroid, was believed by scientists to have a greater than 2 percent chance of hitting earth.

Scientists have since scaled back their predictions — they now believe the odds of it crashing into earth are 1 in 250,000 — but astronomers do expect it to come startlingly close to the earth’s surface, whizzing past our planet just 18,300 miles away in April 2029.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has created a simulation of the asteroid’s path past earth. See it in action (from Apophis’ perspective) below.